New Orleans Jazz Museum hosts beginner-friendly yoga with jazz and self-care

The New Orleans Jazz Museum gave beginner yoga a local accent on Saturday, May 9, with Flow & Grow Yoga & Self-Care, a 10:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. session built around jazz and neo-soul instead of the usual studio playlist. The class was open to New Orleans residents and visitors, and its most appealing feature was simple: it made yoga feel like part of the city’s music culture, not a generic fitness block.

The format was designed to ease people in. The morning began with a self-love prompt, then moved into a community meet-and-greet before certified yoga teacher Olivia F. Scott led beginner vinyasa basics. A closing connection segment finished the session. That structure mattered, because it gave newcomers time to settle in before the flow started and made the room feel social before it got physical.

The price point also kept the event accessible. Tickets were listed at about $7.18 to $12.51, a modest ask for a class inside one of the city’s most recognizable cultural institutions. For practitioners who want more than a mat and a mirror, this was the draw: movement, mindfulness, and a live-music atmosphere wrapped into one downtown outing. The museum says its programming centers jazz through interactive exhibits, educational programming, research facilities, and live performances, which made the yoga session feel like a natural extension of its mission.

The setting gave the class even more weight. The New Orleans Jazz Museum is housed in the historic Old U.S. Mint, built in 1835, at the intersection of the French Quarter and the Frenchmen Street live music corridor. Visit New Orleans describes the Old U.S. Mint as the only building in America to have served both as a U.S. Mint and a Confederate Mint, and its upper level includes a New Orleans Jazz exhibit with instruments, original sheet music, and memorabilia. That kind of backdrop is hard to beat if the goal is to turn self-care into an experience.

The timing fit the city, too. The 2026 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival ran April 23-26 and April 30-May 3, so this class landed just after the city’s biggest music stretch, when the energy around live performance was still in the air. It also matched a broader New Orleans pattern of placing yoga in public and cultural spaces, from the French Market and Jackson Square to NOMA, the Cabildo, and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Flow & Grow fit that tradition, but the museum setting gave it a stronger sense of place than a standard weekend class ever could.